Cheney to Speak at BYU Graduation

Those who know me know I just loved the documentary This Divided State, which is about Micheal Moore's 2004 visit to Utah Valley State College. Well a sequel of sorts is taking place on the campus of Brigham Young University, as the flagship Mormon educational institution has invited the extremely unpopular (though less so in LDS circles) Vice President Richard Cheney to speak at their upcoming graduation exercises. Now the University's stance on this is that they invited Cheney in his capacity as Vice President of the United States, not as partisan political figure. Now I don't have a problem with this line of reasoning, I thinks its an honor to have anyone who holds a high office like this speak at a graduation, because lets face it when your the V.P. you've been successful (though not quite as successful as the man whose the P). College is about success, academically and otherwise, so its totally appropriate for successful people to come and speak. The issue at hand though is two fold: 1) How BYU is handling another completely appropriate University practice, which is to protest when you don't like someone/something. I am heartened to see some real opposition to the Cheney visit in Americas most Republican county, I think its good for the University, though I'm not sure everyone in charge there would agree. 2) Given the cultural association between mountain-west Mormons and even the LDS Church in general with the Republican party, argumentation could be made that on at least some level, the invatation reflects explicit or implicate support of the GOP and its policy's, particularly Iraq. Or as some would argue, this mearly brings forward the moral failing of the LDS Church in not opposing the Iraq War from the start, as most major American Christian denominations did. Anyway all of this is being covered in great detail on the blog This Divided State, and I'd encourage anyone interested to check it out. I'm looking forward to the movie.